


The Next Best Thing

by Morgana



Series: Next Best Thing [1]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:37:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everybody settles for what they have, even if it's not what they really want</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Best Thing

He doesn’t speak Fyarl. His hair is too dark and too short and he doesn’t know very much poetry. But his eyes are a clear blue, like the summer sky above green fields and his voice has the light, crisp accent that will always belong to an English gentleman, no matter what century he was born in. And he had been so very easy to seduce.

Late at night Angel lies awake and watches his lover sleep. The area around the Hyperion is surprisingly quiet at this hour, and with the curtains drawn to block out the city views, he can almost believe that he is in his bed in the London townhouse or the hotel in Vienna or any one of the thousand places he has called home, even if only temporary. If he tries hard enough, he can pretend that a hundred years have not passed, that their weariness when they tumbled into bed was from the real hunt instead of what he makes do with now, and that the body next to him is his boy.

It’s not, of course. It never is. It hasn’t been for over a century, but this is the closest he’s come and probably the nearest he’s going to get. His boy, the tender poet who wore his heart on his sleeve, is gone. He is truly dead now, eradicated by the hard-eyed, harsh creature that has taken his place. Angel knows that as surely as he knows that a large portion of the blame for the beautiful young man’s death lies at his doorstep.

It hurt, oh God, how it hurt to see him in Sunnydale after all those years apart. But what stung even more was the growing certainty that his Will would have accepted him, welcomed him, loved him, even with the soul, but he was never brave enough to give him the chance. He always was a coward when it came down to it. And he pays for that sin now, pays for it in spades every time he looks into blue eyes that used to be soft and tender but now only glitter with disdain and hatred.

A sleepy murmur from the body next to him draws him from his reverie and he turns his attention to the present. This is wrong and he knows it; not because his lover is male or anything to do with his curse, but because every time he holds him, with every kiss he steals, every caress of his hand over long, slender limbs, he has to fight the urge to think of his boy. But would it be so wrong, the small devil on his shoulder urges him? Just this once, to pour out all the love and regret and yearning that he can never show. Is that such a bad thing to want?

He wouldn’t mind. His eyes have the same desperate look that Will’s did, the same hunger for any kind of acceptance, a scrap of kindness, a pretense at love. There’s a darkness there, the same kind of embryonic spark that had drawn Angelus to his boy’s side, the very reason he can never, ever lose his soul until all of his people are dust, for his lover would be turned as one of the demon’s first acts. But for now they are safe, the animal within held at bay, and maybe he can indulge in a little pretense… just this once, he tells himself, and reaches for Wesley.

He’s not Angelus’ sweet, savage childe. He never will be. But he’s the next best thing, and that’s something, at least.


End file.
